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technically brilliant to gloriously cheesy fun.

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Sweden is rocking it out like the whole damn country is the famed Sunset Strip. Big hair and big chops permeate the landscape with acts like Crash Diet, Star Rats, Hardcore Superstar, and Loud 'N Nasty taking it to the streets with a hard rock kick in the nuts. The next big band? Perhaps it is Nasty Idols, who for years have toiled in the back lots with stinker albums like "Cruel Intensions" and "Vicious". The band has been around over 20 years and never really even came close to a decent record outside of "Heroes For Sale" from 2002. That all changed with new album "Boys Town"!

This is a balls out rock record from start to finish, complete with two almost mandatory power ballads to fit in nicely with 1989. The band show off from the first track, the driving "Rock Out" which is as elementary and basic as its name. This is easy paint by numbers hard rock with an anthem like chorus. Sure, this has been done a zillion times over but Nasty Idols picks it up and puts their own spin on it and creates something that is really just fun to romp too. The Swedes nail a couple of bombastic heavy handed doses with "Evil One", "Scar For Life", and "Need The Nite". The band hits it big with a tune that is by far the best song Guns 'N Roses never wrote called "Crashlanding" ("crashlanding and we're walking out ALIVE!"). The lead single "48 Hours" is just plain...well....nasty. The band hits the mid-tempo exchangs with "7 Year Itch" and the grinding title-track.

This is the band's first album for Metal Heaven, a label that seems Hell-bent on putting out every piece of metal they can over the next 2 years. Overall Nasty Idols have delivered some fine Sunset Strip glory. Remember kids, there are two kinds of hard rock hitting Planet-E right now. You have your "modern" telling of hard rock in the style of Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, Papa Roach, Shinedown, Audioslave (and its copy cats) and then you have the tried and true formula of ripping up song after song of 80s styled class. Nasty Idols are very much the latter.